


Everything Happens So Much (To Archie) (Working Title :P)

by spaceboy



Category: Gretchen Lowell Series - Chelsea Cain
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:09:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1951044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceboy/pseuds/spaceboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie & Leo infiltrate the mob. It goes badly. They also bang. That goes a little better. And Gretchen turns up at the end, because of course she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Happens So Much (To Archie) (Working Title :P)

**Author's Note:**

> We're starting right after the Halloween party in "Let Me Go." Because up till that point it looked like the book was gonna be about mob intrigue. And it should have been. So now it is!

He told Jack he needed to return the clothes.

It was a shitty excuse, but it was all he needed. The goon he talked to at the gate sent him around to the dock, so he knew Jack had understood. He could have dropped off the bag of borrowed week’s salary clothes to anybody on the grounds.

Leo was there. Of course Leo would be there. If Leo ruined this for him, he’d get in line to kill him. The line was pretty long at this point.

Leo took the bag from him without smiling. Jack smiled a little extra to make up for it, and shook his hand heartily. “Thanks. Want to hang around out here for a minute? It was so nice out we decided this was the office for a while.”

It was an amazingly nice day for this early in the year. The sky was clear and the sun was just warm enough on them that the cool breeze off the water was welcome.

“Sure.”

“How’s the psycho-catching been?”

“So-so.” He fell silent. The breeze struck up a little colder and he shivered. He had no idea how to do this. He put a hand in his pocket and squeezed the pill box. It didn’t seem fair that he had to use words. Gretchen would have known what he wanted from that one gesture. “Look, I – um. About – last time, you gave me . . . .” He stopped. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to just say it. There was probably a code. He wished somebody had told him the code.

“You can say whatever you need to, Archie. It’s just us here.”

“Us and half a dozen cameras.”

“They don’t have microphones. You can face the water if you want to make sure they can’t read your lips, but the resolution isn’t good enough for that anyway.”

Archie shifted anyway to put his back toward the island.

“Told you he was a technophobe,” muttered Leo, without looking at either of them. “He doesn’t understand how it works so he assumes it can do anything.” Leo was fidgety, glancing back at the water every couple minutes as if he was afraid someone _was_ watching them from there, and smoking in quick nervous breaths in between. Archie couldn’t tell if he was worried about him being here, or if he was just high. Leo was probably wondering the same thing about him. For him, the answer was both.

“Okay. It’s just. . . .” He didn’t know why he stopped this time. He needed to spit it out before Jack got annoyed with him for wasting his time. But it wasn’t just that he was worried about cameras. There was something else, a warmth in his face and a worried tightness in his chest. “It’s just embarrassing. I didn’t think I’d have to do this. But I need the pills, Jack.” More embarrassing than the fact of it was that his voice came out a little high, a little strained, more than a little desperate. He held more tightly onto the box in his pocket and fixed his eyes on Jack, a look that was probably more pleading than he wanted it to be. He refused to look at Leo. At least he could do that much to save his dignity.

“That’s fine. There’s no point being embarrassed about it here. But you know you have to pay for it.”

“Yeah. And you know I don’t have the money.”

“What, you mean they don’t give you a raise after the fifth or sixth time you single handedly save the day? That hardly seems fair.”

He managed to laugh just a little. “Just doing my job,” he said with a little too much bitterness.

“Well, if that isn’t worth anything to the city, it is to me. I’ll get you the pills, and anything else you need. Anything. I’ll let you know when you can do something for me.”

“I don’t need anything else,” Archie said quickly.

“All right, all right.” Jack raised his hands in an innocent gesture at Archie’s defensive tone. “Nobody’s making you. But if you’re turning it down to minimize how dirty your hands get, it’s not going to work very well.”

“Humor me for a while. I’m still dealing with doing this. I actually believe in my job.”

“But belief doesn’t get you as high as Vicodin does,” Leo chimed in, and threw his cigarette into the water with an abrupt angry twitch of his arm.

“I guess not.”

“We’ll be in touch, then,” said Jack. He shook Archie’s hand again, pressing a rattling prescription bottle into Archie’s palm as he did.

“Thank you, Sir.”

He couldn’t believe he’d said that, and said it so easily. He slipped the bottle into his pocket and nodded quickly to them both without looking at them. Then he turned and almost ran across the lawn, hand still in his pocket, clutching the bottle.

At least he made it out the front gate before he opened it.

Almost.


End file.
